NintendoLogic

This is the best I've seen Miz look in a long time, possibly ever.

I like the idea of the Usos as Samoan Andersons.

It shouldn't be too hard to fill the time. Just have Wyatt come out and ramble on about nothing for a few minutes and make the other matches a few minutes longer.

Punk has no combat sports background and was fighting a guy in his weight class. Del Rio is light-years ahead of him as a fighter.

Slaughter/Patterson ended when the Grand Wizard threw in the towel because Slaughter had lost too much blood. I'd classify that as iconic. And the loaded boot in Slaughter/Sheik was iconic enough for Slaughter to do a callback to it in the Desert Storm Match with Hogan. Basically, I think any match finish centered around a MacGuffin (like the boot or the coal miner's glove in Duggan/DiBiase) qualifies as iconic.

Come to think of it, HHH and Stephanie having a one dollar bet over whether they can mold Kevin Owens into a corporate champion sounds like a pretty cool idea.

Yeah, Buzz turned face shortly after this match when he rescued his brother Brett from the Legion of Doom.

The story goes that New Japan owns the footage but they were embarrassed by Hash/Chono stinking out the joint so they never consented to release it.

After rewatching, I have less of a problem with the opening arm work. It was presented as Sawyer being opportunistic after Rich banged his arm on the cage rather than a strategy formulated beforehand. Given that, it made sense for him to abandon it after Rich kneed him in the groin. it was like he realized there was no real point in working holds in a match where your opponent can escape by gouging your eye or hitting you in the balls.

I posted my initial thoughts in the WWE Network thread, but I'll move them here. I don't want to seem like I'm trying to be nitpicky, so let me just emphasize that the opening lockup/armbar stuff was literally my only problem with the match. Everything after that was pure gold.

EDIT: moved to LBOA thread

Kevin Owens had the absolutely perfect response to the "you deserve it" chants. I'm not a fan of him in the ring, but his character work is gold.

He had a pretty good number of singles matches on Raw and Smackdown. http://www.profightdb.com/wrestlers/roman-reigns-6728.html?year=2014 How many of them can you recall with any degree of specificity? Exactly. Meltzer was an outlier on Reigns/Orton. Scott Keith's comments far more closely capture the general consensus: I dunno about this Reigns push, dude. This was a really slow-paced match and the fans were more into Orton’s comeback. I was certainly not particularly invested in the finish or anything. This was certainly not the star-making performance they were probably looking for. **1/2 And he came in second to Kane for Most Overrated in the 2014 WON awards.

The thing is, all of Roman's singles matches prior to the Rumble were pretty underwhelming, so it was easy to see him as a guy who looked good when he was protected in the Shield but had been exposed in singles. Once "smart" fans peg you as someone who can't work, that reputation is nearly impossible to overcome.

EDIT: Beaten to it For what it's worth, Kevin Owens is from the South Shore and not Montreal proper.

If the dog story is true, I hope he rots in hell.

I see what you're saying, but I have to disagree. Yes, Steph took the majority of the match, but, the heel is supposed to do that. Steph vs. Brie isn't exactly Ronnie Garvin vs. Jim Cornette in terms of a mismatch. And, Steph's win was due to Nikki turning heel on her sister, which should have theoretically transferred the heat from Brie/Steph to Brie/Nikki. But, it never really went anywhere, and, the Bellas just sort of kissed and made up without any explanation. Summerslam was her first match in over a decade, and she had never been portrayed as all that competent when she did wrestle semi-regularly. It would've been one thing if she had used her authority to stack the deck in her favor or something like that. But she just bulldozed Brie like she was Bull Nakano. If you compare it to how Cena/Laurinaitis was worked in 2012, it's like night and day. And Johnny Ace was actually an accomplished wrestler.

Stephanie has been tolerable in her current role. She's not really adding anything to the product, but she's also no longer making Raw literally unwatchable for me.

Honestly, Dylan is literally the only person I can recall who expressed a negative opinion about the ladder match. I haven't seen it, but I doubt I'd like it much due to my disdain for ladder matches in general. I did like all the other matches in their series, though.

I checked out Asuka/Bayley and Joe/Nakamura. Botch aside, the women's match was pretty solid, but Asuka having to respect Bayley's Diva-tier offense was kind of annoying. It'd be like if Toshiaki Kawada had to sell for Shawn Michaels. On the other hand, I absolutely loved the NXT title match. Maybe all the video game wrestling on display at Summerslam lowered my expectations, but seeing an actual wrestling match built around strikes and matwork felt like a breath of fresh air. At first blush, I'm prepared to call it the best singles match in the US this year. After seeing all the love the Revival tag is getting, I'll make sure and check it out as well. I really like what I've seen from them so far, so I'm sure it'll be right up my alley.

Folks at DVDVR are speculating that it'll lead to Bryan siccing Samoa Joe on Miz.

In fairness, he also said the following: That being said, is it stupid to ask senior citizen Sting to TAKE that bump on his neck? Yes. Is it stupid to ask Balor to take that bump into a guard rail? Yes. But it’s not technically Seth’s fault. That being said, yes, they need to stop doing that move. The way I read it, he's saying that the issue is with the move itself and not Rollins specifically. Of course, Rollins also broke Cena's nose and blew out his knee trying to do a sunset flip powerbomb. He wouldn't have to do all that high-risk stuff if he knew how to work.

It's not bad luck when it keeps happening with the same guy. Rollins needs to learn how to work.

Scott Keith gave Cena/Styles ****3/4. So there you go.

The problem with the modern WWE style is that everyone has a boatload of moves that can't finish a match and only exist to take up time. So we get AJPW/ROH-style big move overkill combined with the WWE tradition of only one or two legitimate finishers. It's the worst of both worlds.